Keeping On, Keeping On
by circuswheel
Summary: He likes that about Tori, that she usually thinks about what she says, that she takes the time to, and she doesn't make a big deal out of it, either. Robbie and Tori get closer after graduating from Hollywood Arts. Longest twoshot (now three! oops!) fic ever.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Overtly long Robbie/Tori twoshot because you guys know I can't be concise about anything.**

**I've been daydreaming about writing some sort of college!Victorious for a while, so here this is. I never thought I'd write Tori as a main character / love interest, but having her be spazzy in TYSW, as well as some of the reviews you guys had left, have softened me to her, and I tried really hard at this. It was actually a lot of fun, though rereading it now I completely loathe all of it. Title will probably change, too.**

**Hope you enjoy!**

**Keeping On, Keeping On**

**Part 1 of 2.**

There are a few important things in life that Robbie's slowly and reluctantly come to learn are true. Three main things, actually; lessons that he's learned. One, he's pretty much a giant nerd. Two, girls don't usually go for giant nerds. Three, at college, girls still don't usually go for giant nerds.

As usual, he'd been fairly underwhelming in all aspects of his life, and he hadn't followed Beck to New York in early June after graduation to try out for Broadway. Honestly, Robbie really didn't think that he could last a single day in New York City (even a nice part, like Manhattan), and he hadn't thought Beck could, either. But it was early September now and Beck's not on Broadway, but he is on off-Broadway, actually, and he shares a room with two people in an apartment in Brooklyn and whenever he finds the time to call Robbie there's always laughter and music as background noise and he sounds pretty happy and excited.

He doesn't regret not going, still. He's glad for Beck, glad that his friend has drive and is doing what he wants and is sort of succeeding, but – there doesn't seem to be any place in that scenario where he, Robbie, would fit in, he thinks. No, not in the least.

Robbie's always gotten good grades – nothing spectacular, nothing good enough to beat out Sinjin for valedictorian, or even beat out Jade for high honors, but decent enough, good enough that he's been accepted to all four of the colleges he's applied to and he even gets partial scholarships to two of them.

He sort of thinks that his parents are a little not-so-secretly disappointed that they paid an extortionate amount of money for him to go to a performing arts school for four years with nothing really to show for it (okay, no, he _knows_ that, actually, because they've told him). Because of this, and because he really has absolutely no life plans and no clue what he wants to do as a legitimate career, he picks the cheapest of the four colleges, California State, and it's only about an hour from home, too, so if he really needs to come home and dig a hole in the backyard to lay in and pull a rock over himself he figures he can do that pretty easily.

He'd spent most of the summer after graduating Hollywood Arts playing retro videogames in Beck's RV, helping him create checklists for things he would need to bring with him to New York (at one point, incredulously: "This list has twelve different hair products," and Beck just stared), and feeling awkward as always whenever Jade came around – they'd broken up for nearly 8 months during junior year, going into senior, but now they were BeckandJade 2.0 again. Trying to be a good friend to Cat, who really just tired him out all the time now that he knew for a fact that she _really didn't want to date him oh god no_, and making the slow, painful process of packing up his bedroom for the move to college.

Beck and Cat had come over one day to help him filter through his clothes. They'd left him with exactly four acceptable shirts to wear at school, but Robbie had sneaked his pink dress shirt into the suitcase after they'd gone home for the night. At least there was that.

Cat was in New York now too, going to a liberal arts school for acting and writing. Jade was up in northern California at – god, he's forgotten the name of the school she was going to, he'll have to check her Splashface page once he gets back to his room. Anyway, he does remember that she is majoring in Visual Arts and also Anthropology, because Jade is weird.

He doesn't quite know how BeckandJade 2.0 is (or is it 'are'? Jade would know) fairing what with the long distance – he never gets to talk to Beck long enough to ask him, and he and Jade have never been phone buddies. Yesterday, he'd poked her on Splashface, and the alert on his phone said she'd poked back an hour ago. She's actually messaged him once or twice since going off to school, and she hadn't even used any curse words! Absence does make the heart grow fonder, he thinks.

Anyway, none of this really has anything to do with the three main things, does it, aside to point out that he was a nerd in the womb and he was a nerd in high school and, well, it's nearly a week into college classes and he still is sort of a nerd.

Tori is also enrolled in Cal State, he'd found out one night in July when they had all gathered together for one of their increasingly rarer-and-rarer group hang-outs in the RV.

That's a main thing. That should be, like, the most main thing, Tori Vega going to the same college as him.

"Yeah, I really waited until the very end of the deadline to put in my papers," Tori said when he expressed his surprise (he'd told everyone he was going to go to Cal State months ago, before graduation, waving the pamphlet about). She had been sitting on a corner of Beck's bed, absently picking pepperoni bits off of her slice of pizza and wrinkling her nose ever-so-slightly at the grease (Andre had been asleep next to her, half-falling of the mattress and snoring softly. He was moving out at the end of the month, and he told them he'd spent all day helping transport his grandmother's stuff into the assisted-living apartment she'd be staying in without him. Having met Andre's grandmother, Robbie understands the tiredness). "I don't really … know what I want, I guess. You know?"

"Yeah," said Robbie automatically, because he does know, knows _exactly_, but mostly just because sometimes he's still kind of reduced to monosyllabic grunts in front of females.

Especially when they're wearing tiny purple tanktops and ripped up jean shorts. Oh, yes, he does have a love/hate relationship with summer.

Tori carefully placed the discarded pepperoni down on her napkin, and she had hesitated before finally biting into the slice, apparently deciding she would let herself say more. Around a mouthful: "I really – love performing, I love singing, but after, you know, what happened to Trina, I can't just rely on that, you know?"

"Yeah," said Robbie again. Last year, Trina'd taken the car her parents bought her for graduation and headed out to LA, expecting her big break. She'd found it – that is, if a big break means sleeping with the director of a small indie film, catching some indeterminable venereal disease (Cat, Jade, and Tori won't tell any of the boys what it is, though he suspects Jade really, really wants to), and then binge-drinking for three weeks to drown out her pain. She was now living back at home, working at Chili My Bowl to help and pay off doctor bills from when she hadn't had health insurance for two months.

Poor Trina. He wonders, sometimes, if she'd taken to heart what the dean of admissions had said to her after her audition to a private college outside of Northridge (Tori had gone with her, and heard everything). It's not that her voice was even truly bad, she just needed to find her pitch, Robbie thought secretly. She should have more self-worth, he thought, than to have tried to sleep with some guy for a role she wasn't even secured to get.

Wisely – maybe – he chose not to voice this to Tori. She'd been very protective over Trina for the past year. He'd been over at the Vegas' last month with Cat, and Trina had been home, and she'd seemed – well, same old Trina, loud and a little snooty, but she'd disappeared upstairs fairly quickly instead of hanging around and insulting them, as she would have done in the past.

Tori shrugged a little and gave him a rueful smile before biting into her pizza once more. "I guess we'll see what happens, huh? Hey, you should let me know when you pick out your schedule! Maybe we'll - "

"Vega, will you get over here and inform Cat that these stupid marks are mosquito bites and not a sign of alien abduction?" Jade's voice had cut out across the RV. Dimly, somewhere near her, Cat had squeaked.

Good old Cat.

"Um, _what?_" Tori had demanded, setting her food down on the nightstand, brows furrowing. She'd used her knee to push herself up and off of Beck's bed. Turning, she'd shot Robbie a little apologetic / why are our friends so weird glance before smoothing her tank top and heading off to the front of the RV.

He'd just looked after her, thinking, _maybe we'll _what?

In his sleep, Andre mumbled, "No, girl, don't eat all that ham," and rolled onto his side. Robbie stared, then covered him with a blanket.

* * *

Near the end of the first week away at school, he's holding his lunch in one hand – an organic veggie burger that's been promised to taste like real beef but sort of looks rather greenish and unappealing anyway – bookbag in the other (and everyone else here has either got a messenger bag or nothing at all to carry their schoolbooks in, can't he be the least bit cool or keyed-in ever?), and looking awkwardly around the courtyard.

The school's campus is big and confusing, and he's already a little beaten down from being ten minutes late to his first class of the day. In his second, he'd missed his mouth while swigging from his water bottle and had choked and sputtered for thirty seconds, and he doesn't think that the girl who'd been sitting next to him will be again, plus now he has spots on his favorite shiny pink shirt. He's got a little headache from his roommate laying up all night (all week, really, if you want the cold hard truth) listening to loud music from the late 60s and, really, he is feeling very dismal about the prospect of the student center store carrying any earplugs that are made from organic fibers.

He's trying to scope out a place to sit that isn't too crowded with hordes of loud people but also isn't so secluded as to make it look like he is very obviously alone. He's just passing by the water fountain when someone suddenly grabs his wrist and he nearly screams and drops his sandwich, but then he just hears a familiar saying, "Robbie, thank _God!_" and it's Tori, who tugs him quickly and sharply off to the left.

"Uhhh. Hi Tori!" he manages brightly, voice cracking a little bit because oh of course it would. He shifts his backpack onto his shoulder and watches as Tori collapses down onto one of the benches that line the courtyard and looks at him expectantly.

After a moment, he realizes that - oh, she must want him to sit with her. He takes a seat carefully beside her, not sitting too close, because Cat's told him girls don't like that.

Tori smiles over at him, and just like that, he feels the familiar flush creeping up over his neck. Tori is – well, he's known Tori for nearly three years now, and they're friends, he supposes, but he's never had the chance to really hang out with her alone more than a handful of times. He's in quite unfamiliar territory right now.

It would be safe to say that Robbie has had - still has, will always have, whatever - major, unyielding crushes on his three female friends. It's that – girls are pretty, you know, and he's just a little awed that any of them talk to him ever. He thinks he's even a little bit in love with Jade, though if anyone ever found out about that Beck would kill him and then Jade would probably perform some strange voodoo act to bring him back to life and then kill him again.

Tori is different, though. Well – they're all different, everyone is different, you know.

For a long time, over a year, he'd been fixated on Cat, and if you asked him, he wouldn't really be able to find the words to tell you exactly why. How can you describe your feelings for someone? Cat was – and still sort of is – a symbol of what he wants, and what he feels he should want. Sweet and funny (usually unintentionally so), she's just the sort of girl everyone would expect him to like, the sort of girl he _does _like. He doesn't know any boy weirder than himself; he doesn't know any girl weirder than Cat. They sort of fit together in a strange sort of way – a _weird_ way, yeah. Whenever they were together, if were hanging out or just at school, she'd made him feel like he was full of helium, dizzy and too-bright and a little nauseous, his guts and heart all squeezing together into something not-quite painful.

He thinks maybe the fumes from all her hair dye had affected his brain patterns.

Anyway, when he'd finally gotten the courage to ask Cat out (and actually ask, not just sing her a very obvious love song and have it completely go over her head), in September of senior year, well – apparently Cat didn't think of him as the sort of boy she was expected to like. She'd laughed a little bit, then realized he was serious, then apologized profusely. He thinks the apologizing had been much worse than the laughter. She'd also said the most horrible sentence _It's not that I don't like you, Robbie_, followed by a list of reasons why she didn't, you know, like him.

Thus ended his infatuation with Cat, though he still couldn't help the gut-squeezing feeling (different than when he drank milk) from occasionally cropping up when they'd speak. Jade made his guts squeeze, too, but more out of fear than anything, and o_h god definitely no thinking about Jade ever ever_ because she might actually be able to read minds and could appear at any moment to _murder him_.

Tori is different.

Almost more real than Cat in a way, but also incredibly far away – he's never even entertained the thought he'd have a snowman's chance in hell with a girl like Tori (blame the horrible and cliched phrasing on Robbie's father, who always has a lame quip to pull out and cheer you up with), and that's part of why it's always been easiest for him to talk to her, because she has no expectations of him.

Not that it's ever been easy for him to talk to any girl ever.

He says again, eloquently, a man right out of GQ, "Ahm. Hey. Tori."

Tori nicely doesn't mention the fact that he's said hello twice now with no word from her. She just looks – and this is the weirdest thing ever – sort of happy to be sitting with him. Elated, actually.

She says, "I am _so glad_ to see you! God, I really was _not_ looking forward to sitting all by myself again."

"Oh," says Robbie. "Well. Luckily. Fear not, young Vega. I am here now, to be blundering and awkward and in your personal space, and to spare you the loneliness of a lunch eaten, um, alone."

Tori's eyebrows have been raised since the 'young Vega' line, and now they arch even higher as a little smile curls on her lips. "Yeah," she says slowly, but at least not meanly, "I, um, really appreciate it."

He thinks he's actually used up his entire allotment of spoken words for the day so he just sort of hums quietly and shifts around on the bench, working his backpack out from behind him. His palms feel sweaty. Tori watches him for another minute, probably waiting to see if he'll say something, but when he doesn't, she sighs and takes it as cue to continue.

"College is really not like the movies at all," she says. "I mean, we've been here for a _week_ – well, I have, at least, I don't know about you – and I haven't made a single friend."

Robbie stares, because the idea of making a friend in a week is utterly baffling to him. It took him a _year_ to feel confident enough to go to Good Burger and hang out with Beck and Andre; Jade's_ still_ not really his friend -

"I, I've actually only had _four_ conversations with anyone in my dorms," Tori continues. "Four! You know, I'm really glad it's not all crazy parties all the time, but what do you say to people when you're passing them for class? Yeah, heading to Biology! Keep on!"

"You're taking Biology?" he blurts.

Tori pauses and blinks at him, because he's missing the point as usual. "Yeah," she says. "Well, supposed to be. I sort of, um, missed the first class, and it only meets once a week." Defensively, she cries before he can add anything else, "8 am is early!"

"Yes," he says emphatically, because it is, and because the monosyllabic thing again. He feels he should say more: "Um. Do you – I haven't, well, had many conversations either. I, I probably, should have brought Rex or something. As an icebreaker."

Tori's brows arch again, and she nicely doesn't say anything regarding his puppet. She says, "Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one."

Robbie awkwardly puts in, "Yeah." He fiddles with the sandwich, beginning to unwrap it as he scours his brain, trying to think of something interesting to say to Tori so she won't regret pulling him aside. "Um."

Tori laughs. "Robbie, what are you _eating?_"

"I," he says, and holds up the veggie burger, which looks even sadder and more green now that it's freed from its cellophane prison. The bun is also rather squashed, he notes. "It's a burger."

Carefully, she says, "From 1972?" and Robbie laughs suddenly, surprised.

Tori smiles at him. She's wearing red lipstick, but other than that, no makeup (at least, he doesn't think so – really, he can't ever tell with girls, or sometimes Beck), and she's wearing a light off-the-shoulder sweatshirt with a cartoon cat on it, and her long hair is shiny and pulled back from her face. She just looks very sweet and nice, and he feels good sitting next to her, even with his hands being all sweaty from it.

"It's a veggie burger," he says. "I, you know, there was just pizza," he gestures to the plate she's holding on her own lap, "and I get the, you know, the rash. 'Cause the cheese."

"Oh yeah," Tori says, and looks a little glum for him. It doesn't stop her from, a moment later, happily picking up her slice and biting into it, though. "I'm really sorry for you."

"Yeah," says Robbie, and holds his burger at arm's length. "You look really sorry."

Tori laughs.

* * *

Tori turns out to be in his Wednesday morning Biology Lab, and he's a little surprised when she tells him that she's always been interested in science. He shouldn't be shocked, he thinks later, reflecting. She'd been pretty adamant about it in high school. It's just one of those things – you know, things he doesn't really know about Tori. He'd just thought she was good at everything.

"No way," Tori snorts when he tells her this, not even creeped out by him! "I'm _so_ not – oh, you were never in my History classes, were you? Just Beck and Andre. Abraham Lincoln - he was the vampire hunter, right?"

Robbie laughs.

"And sometimes I forget to spell easy words," Tori continues. "And yesterday it took me _three_ tries to spell 'embarrassment' the right way."

"It's a lot of letters," he offers.

"That's what _I'm_ saying!" Tori waves her arms for emphasis, which – it's like, okay, he already knows she's cute. She doesn't need to be going around being adorable, waving her arms at _words_ all indignantly.

Tori goes off on a long tangent about the English language and why do they have to have fifteen to twenty words to all say the same thing? In Spanish pretty means pretty and if you want to say it you say _bonita_ and there aren't a thousand adjectives for it that a person could spell wrong.

Robbie nods seriously, listens to her talk until the class period has ended and the rest of the students have filtered out. Tori would know about these things. She is half Latina, you know!

"Oh," Tori cuts herself off suddenly, frowning around at the now-empty lab room. "I didn't – oh!" again as she looks up at the clock – "Robbie, you should have told me I was talking too much!"

"Um. I didn't. Notice?"

Tori frowns, shrugs, closes her notebook. "Oh well. Guess we'll just have to be lab partners now, huh?"

"Guess so," he says, staring.

He's never had a girl willingly offer to be his partner for anything before.

Tori just smiles at him like she isn't sacrificing her whole semester. "Well, I have about an hour to kill before my next class. Want to get coffee? Or, oh, you probably can't drink that. Want to – watch me drink coffee?"

"Yes," he says.

* * *

September passes, and he's still shocked to no end whenever he sees a text message from Tori pop up on his phone, inviting him to hang out in the student hall or asking him to come get food or just sending a silly message.

She must be making other friends by now, he thinks, puzzled. Why she still seems to want to spend time with him outside of class, he doesn't know.

They sit up late in the student hall one night, sharing a pack of Twizzlers (Robbie thinks that the artificial food coloring will give him indigestion, but Tori doesn't need to know this), going over their Bio Lab notes to prepare for the next week's dissection, their first of the semester, but really just killing time.

Tori twists her mouth up a little when Robbie asks her how she likes her roommate. "April's _nice_," she says slowly. "We don't really have that much in common, though?" She's quiet for a moment, thinking. Robbie likes that about Tori, that she usually thinks about what she says, that she takes the time to. She doesn't make a big deal out of it, either. "You saw her that one time – doesn't she have nice hair? She's sweet, but she's always holed up in our dorm, reading fanfiction and crying over boys on the Internet."

"Oh," says Robbie.

"Yeah," says Tori. "A little odd." Conspiratorially, she adds, "I think she smokes cigarettes when I'm not in the room."

Robbie laughs, because he could tell Tori some stories about roommates who smoke, so he does. His own roommate, Steve, has an oral fixation (Steve's own words, not Robbie's), and smokes everything, including some things that Robbie had previously thought could not be smoked. He'd told Robbie that he had ADD and – horrifically waving a baggie of what was surely marijuana but Robbie had never actually seen the drug before in his life so really who could tell oh god he was going to jail – needed to self-medicate. After Robbie's nine-minute nervous breakdown, he'd nicely agreed that he wouldn't smoke anything in their dorm room anymore.

"That's … thoughtful, I guess," Tori mutters, frowning. He'd sort of glossed over the nine-minute nervous breakdown thing.

He tells Tori about the almost incessant parade of girls Steve has coming through the room – the blonde one has been through a few times; he must like the blonde one – and Tori looks horrified, which Robbie finds to be an appropriate reaction.

"Oh my _god!_" she says. "Does he – he, _sleeps_ with them? While you're in the _room_?"

"No," Robbie says darkly. "They listen to _records._"

Tori laughs at him, but Robbie shakes his head fitfully, trying to cut her off. "No, Tori," he insists. "He listens to – do you know – The Grateful Dead. Have you, have you ever heard, or have you ever said, said anything bad about The Grateful Dead?"

"No-_ooo_," Tori says slowly, looking confused (and, you know, cute, but what else is new?).

"Well, don't. Ever. Especially never, ever say that they sound repetitive." Steve had stared blankly at Robbie for a long moment, then said: "Some people would kill you for that." Then he'd made Robbie listen to _two albums_, trying to make him change his mind.

Tori grins and reaches to get another Twizzler, just as Robbie is leaning to take one, and their hands bump a little. Robbie pulls back, burned, but Tori doesn't seem to have minded. "So what was the final verdict? Anything life-altering?"

"Still repetitive," he says flatly, and feels good when Tori snorts and smiles at him. "Apparently I have upset the rock gods and am not allowed back in the room tonight."

Tori laughs, frowns, laughs again. "Well, if you really need to, I'm sure I can sneak you in. You can crash on our floor." Thoughtfully, "I don't think April would even notice."

"Erm," says Robbie. "You – well I – um – okay, I, I might do that."

"Yeah, okay." Tori shrugs. "We'll just wait til the front desk closes then go up." She checks her watch. "Oh god, and it's almost ten! I haven't written anything down! Robbie, you _gotta_ stop letting me talk so much!"

"Sorry," he says. Reaching around to pull out his textbook, he's surprised to note that, really, he'd been talking just as much as she had.

* * *

One day he walks into Tori's dorm room (carting a very giant bag of Chinese food, which he can't eat, but is totally willing to watch Tori eat) to find Tori and her roommate both sitting on her bed, watching the television and bawling at it.

"Um," he says. "Ladies? Do you need a minute? Or - ?"

"God, Robbie, can't you be quiet, there's only four more minutes left!" Tori yells tearfully, batting a hand at him without moving her eyes from the screen.

"Er," he says, baffled as usual, and maneuvers awkwardly through the cramped room to set the food down upon April's desk. Not much in common, indeed, he thinks.

Tori's apparently decided the girl isn't so bad and sometimes April will catch a quick lunch with them before running off to one of her psych classes. She and Tori are always laying about in their dorm room now, eating food and watching old TV shows on Netflix and hyperventilating over them. Currently they're started to watch the X Files, and he guesses (from the tears, you know) that they've gotten pretty into it.

After Tori's fourth rant to him about how Sully and Molder – that's their names, right? - are destined to be together and strange things about the government is evil, he'd asked her, a little teasingly, if April had managed to suck her into the dark underworld of fanfiction. Tori had glared at him very hard and not spoken to him for _three whole days!_

He still wasn't sure if the glare had meant yes or no.

Anyway, he'd felt terrible for those three days, terrible enough to go to a trashy party with Steve on Friday night, and it really hadn't been that bad because all they'd done was sit on someone's couch and play Banjo Kazooie for three hours. If not for the joint dangling from Steve's mouth, Robbie feels like it could have been another night at Beck's RV, and that's all right.

On Monday Tori forgives him, blithely accepting the coffee he's holding hopefully for her as she comes sweeping out of her dorm room for class that morning (he hadn't wanted to knock, so he'd been awkwardly standing by the door for twenty-two minutes, getting wary looks from other girls passing by) and not even caring to hear the five minute groveling speech he's prepared.

"It's just that April was in the bathroom and I thought she'd hear you," Tori says as they're walking down the steps to the main hall. "I don't want you to hurt her feelings – I told you about the fanfiction in _confidence!_" She sends him a little glare, and he looks down at the staircase, cowed. "You should think more about what you choose to say, Robbie."

"I do think about what I say!" he says, a little hurt. Why does she think he hardly says anything sometimes? "When, when have I, when has something I said - ?"

Tori gives him a withering look. "_Tinkle-Aid_," she says.

"You - ! Did we not raise the money for the bathroom, Tori?!"

"Oh, and every single sexist comment or flirting attempt you've ever tried to do through Rex."

"Oh." Well, there is that.

"_Oh,_" Tori echoes, and purses her lips, but not too meanly, all things considered. She gazes at him pointedly.

"I'm – sorry. I didn't, I didn't know it bothered you. I mean." He feels the flush on his neck again, but it's not-so-good now. "I didn't – mean it. I mean, I never actually thought those things. Just was. Trying to be funny."

"No, I know that," Tori says, and she gives him another little smile to show that she isn't too mad, which is nice. "You know, I think I like you better without him."

"Oh," he says, and feels sort of stupidly good. "Thanks. And um, sorry."

He buys the girls a poster for their dorm room that says "The Truth Is Out There."

* * *

October is better, because he's sort of learned the layout of the school by now and he doesn't get lost when his classes meet in the library and he knows when to sneak out of Tori and April's room early if the mean TA is working the halls. Robbie somehow manages to communicate to Steve that he can't sleep while Steve is playing his records all night (actually, he just says, "Steve, I can't sleep when you're playing your records all night"), so now they have an eleven-o'clock bedtime rule that states that headphones must be used.

"You coulda just said," Steve says.

"Yeah," says Robbie. Who knew communication could actually be easy? It's only nine, so he watches as Steve selects one last record to put on, and then they lay on their respective beds, Robbie finishing up his English assignment, and Steve - probably daydreaming about smoking various things. "Who is this?"

"Clapton."

"Oh." Robbie files this away in his brain. He wonders if that is the name of the band or the singer, and if it is first name or last name, but sometimes Steve looks really hurt when he asks him these questions about music, so he'll look it up later. "It's not bad."

Steve grins up at the ceiling.

He and Tori do their first dissection, a little frog, and Tori looks a little overwhelmed and upset when they've cut it open and have it all pinned back. "How are we supposed to label - ? Oh," she says in distress. "The organs all look sort of the same, don't they? Not all color-coordinated like in the text."

She pokes doubtfully at the frog. The organ squelches slightly, and Tori gasps in alarm, jumping back, apologizing to it. Robbie tries not to grin. Tori looks like she's reconsidering her love of science as she frowns and writes their names atop their printout sheet.

Sometimes he feels - well. It's nothing _new,_ his feelings, you know. He's always known that Tori was pretty, smart, and nice, always been a little awed by her. He just hadn't realized how - how _cute_ she can be, sometimes.

He wonders if you can die from a girl being too cute. If she apologizes to that frog again, he really might die.

Tori gets involved in student government and for a few weeks all she talks about is young adult's rights and the degeneration of society and the upcoming election. She drags Robbie to a couple of lectures that he mostly spaces out through about the economy and the place of the middle class worker and women's rights and something horrific about the banning of tampons that he's successfully managed to block. He doesn't understand politics at all, really, and to be honest he doesn't think Tori gets the entirety of it either, but it's nice to see her so fired up about something again, bright-eyed and bursting with excitement in a way she hasn't been since Hollywood Arts.

Anyway, he likes to go to the rallies, because it means that he gets to just listen to other people speak, instead of having Tori tell him things and then ask him questions about his views, of which there aren't many. The rallies always have really good popcorn. He keeps meaning to ask Tori who's sponsoring them.

Tori laughs at him as he's squeaking sadly and licking melted butter off the side of his hand when they're getting ready to pack up and go home. "You're nuts," she says, poking him a little bit. "Or should I say you're _corn._" She makes a doofy little face and grins, jabbing him again, and he can't help laughing.

"I don't think that even classified as a pun," he says, and feels badly when Tori pouts exaggeratedly, even though he knows she's just kidding. Who would have known that Tori Vega, the world's most perfect girl, would tell worse jokes than he did?

He thinks she tells them perfectly anyhow, though. They're perfectly awful, but perfect nonetheless.

Now Tori's taking the empty popcorn bag from him and pouting into it. "Aw, Robbie!" she whines. "You really ate the whole thing? I didn't have any dinner!"

"I'll buy you a veggie burger," he offers nicely, not quick enough to move when she hits him lightly in the stomach.

"Make it a milkshake and french fries and I'll take it," she says, and grins hopefully.

Robbie sighs exaggeratedly and makes to trudge out to the parking lot, like he could ever say no to anything Tori asks of him. Tori bounces along after him, happy.

* * *

Thanksgiving comes up, and Robbie offers to give Tori a ride back home for the holidays. Tori still hasn't managed to get her license, and she beams at the thought of not having to deal with the embarrassment of her father picking her up - "Or worse, _Trina!_"

"How, um, how is she doing anyway?" he asks.

They're in Tori's dorm room, watching an old Drake and Josh rerun on TV, and Tori leans over him now to grab the remote and turn the volume down. Some of her soft hair falls into his face for a moment, and she smells like vanilla and cherries. He nearly passes out.

Oblivious, Tori tosses the remote back onto the floor, chewing on her bottom lip (pink lipstick today, and very lovely on her, just in case you were wondering) for a moment. "Pretty good," she says. "In January she's um, going to be taking classes at Northridge Community."

"Oh," he says. He's not really sure why he's asked, because he has never known what to say about Trina ever. "That's – really cool."

"Yeah," Tori says, and goes silent for a moment. She says, a little fiercely, I'm really proud of her."

"I - "

"I know you guys don't really like Trina," Tori continues on, and he wonders why she's said _you guys_ like Jade and Andre and Cat and Beck are in the room, "and I mean, sometimes _I_ don't like Trina, but she's my sister and I love her."

"Um," he says. "I know."

Tori sends him an abashed half-smile. "Sorry," she says. "Did I just get a little intense?"

"No," says Robbie unconvincingly.

"It's just – well, the others weren't really very – nice – about her, um, problems. I feel bad for even telling you guys. Jade said some really mean things. No one really – disagreed."

"Well," he says eloquently.

"That director was _old_, Robbie," Tori tells him, wrinkling her nose. "I mean, he basically took advantage of her, you know? It's disgusting. Men are disgusting!"

"Yeah," he says in sad agreement, then squeaks. "I mean, I'm not. Disgusting? Am I?"

"Oh," says Tori, and then laughs at him. "No, you aren't disgusting. You're nice, Robbie."

It's not in the same universe as telling someone _I think you're swell,_ but he takes what he can get.

* * *

Christmas break is good because he's gotten A's in all of his classes and his parents are really happy with him and happy to see him; it's nice to be home again, and to see his dog, and to have food that he can actually eat readily available. It's good because Beck and Andre and Jade and Cat come home and everyone's around and he really hadn't realized how badly he'd missed everyone.

It's also not so good because he's sort of been spending the past four months in this really nice, small bubble where he's Tori only friend and he's rather stupidly forgotten that she was the most popular girl in high school and everyone loves her and when he texts her now, she's never home because she's out at a thousand holiday parties.

It's not so good because when he's hanging out in Beck's RV Tori's not even there and he sort of becomes one with the wallpaper again and it's just, everything is exactly how it was. He spills soda on himself and Jade teases him about where Rex is and Cat is giggling in that way that she has where he never knows if she's laughing at him or not. Everyone seems to think that he – that he's the same as he was, and he's not really, not the same. He wants to say, "I'm much cooler than I was and forty-five percent less spazzy, and I listen to The Doors and Eric Clapton now!" and tell them about the political rallies and his pot-smoking roommate and eating cake batter at night with Tori and her roommate.

Well, no. Really, he wants Tori to tell them, he guesses.

In the corner Beck and Andre are covertly talking about girls and Robbie doesn't really have anything at all to add to the discussion, which is sad and typical, and also, Beck should really shut his mouth since Jade is only 11 feet away. They ask him the standard boy questions about girls and has he been on any dates, are there any new cute girls in his life, and when he says no, they shoot him these little sympathetic_ Hang On Little Kitten, You'll Get There!_ looks that are actually sort of maddening.

"I've, um, no, I've been hanging out with Tori a lot, though," he stutters through (see, they'd asked if there were any _new_ cute girls, and Tori isn't new), and Beck and Andre look a little more interested now. "We were in the same science class. And stuff."

Beck nods approvingly, which makes Robbie feel good, but then Andre whines, "Man, how come she ain't here tonight? Some of us are only in town for a week, you know."

Robbie falters. "Um. I don't know. She, she had something else to do, I guess. She got invited to a party. At some guy – Jackson something's? – house, I think."

"Oh," say Beck and Andre, and exchange a look. It's more of a Look, actually, Robbie thinks, with a capital L, and that usually isn't good.

"What?" he says.

Andre's chuckling over him, though. "Go Tor," he says musingly, and laughs some more. "Finally."

"Huh?" says Robbie.

Beck, who knows him better, gives him a sad half-smile. "That guy – Jackson Fuentes? Tori had, like, the biggest crush on him all senior year."

"Oh," he says dumbly. "Yeah. Right."

"I mean," Beck rushes on desperately – Robbie wonders, is he so obvious? – "who cares, right? Probably she just went with someone. He probably didn't even invite her. Right? Andre?"

"Nah, I'm pretty sure he invited her," says Andre blithely, probably the worst human being Robbie's ever met in his life.

"Right," he says again. Beck frowns hugely, opening his mouth up to say something, but then Jade's beside him, so he just puts his arm around her and bites his lip, because you still can't say anything about Tori when Jade is near without fear of expletives.

Robbie wanders over to Beck's mini-fridge and pulls out a rootbeer to drown his sorrows in. What's he upset over, anyway?


	2. Chapter 2

**Keeping On, Keeping On**

**AN: Thanks to everyone for your reviews, follows, and favorites! :) I'm surprised this story got any hits at all. Anyway, I've changed this to a three-parter – not sure why I ever thought I could be so good as to write a simple two-shot, but I promise it won't get any longer than that. I have everything written out aside from the end of the final scene, but uncut, it would have been about 10k, and I think it flows better with the third part.**

**Thanks to Stephanie for helping me with the Jade parts! I was going to have you read this before I published it, but I'm a bit overzealous, chain-smoking before work, and I think the rest of the world is still asleep. Enjoy!**

**Part Two of Three (sorry) **

The idea that he may actually have real and legitimate feelings for Tori is mildly disturbing.

It's disturbing because they're _feelings_, okay, and he's always had feelings about everything, but this is _Tori_ and she's his friend (he thinks, he hopes), and he's being ridiculous, and they – the feelings – are very big and they don't seem to be going anywhere.

He doesn't know what to do about them – he shouldn't do anything about them!

Maybe if he doesn't do anything about them they'll go away!

If he does do something about them, Tori will probably laugh at him, and maybe they'll go away!

Oh, but he doesn't want Tori to laugh at him.

He spends the last two weeks of winter break artfully trying to ignore the feelings and sort of hyperventilating whenever he sees that he has a missed call or text from Tori. The one time that he answers her call, he finds he's been rendered back to that monosyllabic croaking thing, and he sort of squeaks at her and tells her he's too busy to go and see the Norwegian Christmas horror film that Jade's dragging her to.

Also, Jade dragging Tori anywhere? Also mildly disturbing, and a bit baffling, but he's too flustered to question Tori any about it. Tori sounds a little disappointed, which is weird - but then again, he wouldn't want to be at the movies alone with Jade, either (or would he?) - and tells him to give her a call before they head back to school.

"Kay kay," says Robbie, curses himself for saying 'kay kay,' and then procrastinates on calling her back for the next ten days.

He helps his dad clean out the garage. He takes the family dog, Tiger, to the vet for his yearly shots. He reads half of his new Psychology textbook. He invites Beck over and they spend a day in his living room, eating gluten-free crackers that Mom offers (Beck chokes on the first one, but diligently keeps forcing them down) and watching DVDs of Beck's performances in New York.

His roommate, Steve, is flying in from New Jersey two days before they're due back on campus, and Robbie offers to take the hour drive up to the airport to bring Steve back to school so he doesn't have to spend all the money he's made working over break on an overpriced cab.

"Really nice of you, man," Steve says for the twenty-sixth time as they're securing his third and most expensive guitar in Robbie's trunk. "I really appreciate it."

"It's not a problem," Robbie says, very kindly ignoring the fact that the guitar case has scuffed up the trunk handle a bit. His car is old, a hand-me-down from his father, and it has enough lines in it already - including a very long dented run in the driver's side door from when Robbie had hit the mail box during his first week of driving, screamed, backed up, made it worse, and then just drug the whole splinted post along the entire side of the car. "We're roommates, right?"

"Yeah," says Steve, looking oddly touched, and then does that awkward thing sometimes he does where he slings his arm around Robbie's shoulders and just leaves it there for fifteen-plus seconds in a strange form of male solidarity. People from New Jersey are rather affected, Robbie thinks. "You're pretty much my best friend here, man."

"Oh," says Robbie, surprised and pleased, and probably looks a little oddly touched himself. "Hey, thanks."

Steve leaves his arm around Robbie for a few more tender seconds while Robbie glances around covertly and hopes that the rest of the people milling about through the giant airport lot don't think they're boyfriends. Finally Steve releases his grip, and asks him as they're settling into the car, "So how's life? How was your break?"

"It was okay – it was good," Robbie says mildly, and really doesn't think he's going to mention Tori at all, but then he has to abruptly pull into Parking Lot D right before they're getting onto the highway, and he puts his head in his hands and he has a twelve minute breakdown, wherein he tells Steve all about how Tori smells like Japanese cherry blossoms and how no one cares that he likes The Doors now and that Jackson Fuentes has a leather jacket and a convertible and meanwhile Robbie just looks like Kevin Arnold and once Tori saw him almost die after eating a peanut.

Steve rubs his jaw. "First off, I appreciate that Wonder Years reference," he says. At some point during the twelve minutes he's pulled out a chocolate bar and is eating it with mild detachment, like he's watching a documentary for class or something. He waggles his eyebrows speculatively, and Robbie feels woefully misunderstood. "Also, Tori's a hot puppy. And she does smell nice."

"Yes, she does," says Robbie, choosing to ignore the _hot puppy _line, and puts his head on the steering wheel, which emits a sad little honk.

"So why don't you ask her out?"

Robbie lifts his head up and stares blankly. "You - what?"

Steve blinks at him, chewing. "Ask her out."

"You mean – _Tori?_"

"No, I mean Winnie Cooper."

_Honk! _"I, I don't, no, I can't do that."

Steve eats more chocolate. "Why not?"

"Oh Steven," says Robbie, and laughs derisively, because sometimes he forgets that Steve hasn't been around for forever and so may not know the three main facts that have come to rule his life. "Steven, Steven. You haven't – I was, I mean, you didn't go to high school with – she's Tori Vega, and I can't ask her out."

"Oh," says Steve in understanding, and nods. "No. Right. Because that would be proactive, and you don't do that."

Steve is really just a horrible person, probably the most horrible that Robbie's ever met in his life, even worse than Andre. "_No,_" he says emphatically. "You don't understand." He reminds Steve about Cat and thinking she was swell and singing it and how badly that had gone.

Steve shrugs, shoulders laden with stoner wisdom. "Everyone gets burned sometimes, dude."

"Well, I don't like it. Getting burned. Why would anyone put themselves in the position to get, to get burned?" He waves his hands a bit, hitting the steering wheel again –_ honk!_

Steve opens his mouth to speak, but Robbie barrels on: "And you aren't getting what I'm saying; Cat – she, she turned me down, and I was always closer to her than Tori anyway, and, and over break, she still thinks I'm just the same – Cat, that is, not Tori, but probably Tori too – and I am the same! I spilled soda on myself yesterday, and there wasn't even a girl around! And, and I can't drink milk, Steve, I can't go out on dates and drink milkshakes with girls, because the gas builds up and up, and that's not appealing, is it, no, and I used to hide behind a potted plant on Tori's porch, and she will never go out with me."

"Um," says Steve, looking a little overwhelmed because that was a lot of words and scattershot punctuation. "You … you aren't the same?" he tries, but Robbie's already gearing up for more.

"And you should see the guys that she usually goes out with, they're like, they're superhuman, really big, and they have, um, hair on their chests usually, and they always play sports, and I'm, you know, I have a very fragile bone structure, I'm only good at math, and have very bad hand-eye coordination."

Steve begins to grin slowly. "You don't have _any _chest hair?"

"That's - not the point!"

"Right," says Steve, and tries to look apologetic for two seconds before he starts to grin again.

"The point is, I'm not the sort of guy that Tori would go out with, I mean, I don't even know if she even thinks of me as a _friend,_ and I don't have any upper body strength, and I bet none of the guys she's dated have carried around a puppet, I don't - "

"Wait, what – a puppet, man?"

"Haha," says Robbie again nervously, because no one here at school even knows about Rex's existence and he thinks he should take Beck's advice and try to keep it that way. "What?"

"Like – like Grover? Or a, a hand-puppet?"

Robbie says again, "What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Dude - "

"What?" Robbie asks again.

Steve snorts, closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the seat. "You're such a weird little dude."

"I'm not _little,_" Robbie snaps and puts the car back into drive, feeling the conversation has successfully ended.

"Pretty little," Steve comments without moving.

Robbie grumbles something mostly unintelligible about how it's not his fault that the chemical waste in New Jersey did something weird to Steve's skeletal structure to cause him to be really tall and also albino as he turns out of the parking lot, following the street signs out to the highway.

Steve grins, eyes still closed, and pats his jacket down until he pulls out another candy bar. "Still think you should ask Vega out."

"No!"

"Hmm. Maybe she'll bring that leather jacket dude to her dorm room and mack with him under that poster you got her. The truth is out there, man."

_Honk!_

"Shapiro! Christ man, we're_ driving!_ Pick your head up!"

* * *

Robbie's second semester is a little different that the first, because he doesn't have as many morning classes and Tori isn't in the same science lecture as him anymore, which is both a good thing (because of the feelings) and a bad (also because of the feelings).

He's not avoiding her or anything, you know - he's just sent her a text message a few hours ago! It's just that there isn't any reason for them to meet in the cafeteria anymore and go over lab notes, isn't any reason to see each other constantly anymore.

One night about a week into classes, he and Steve are sitting in the student center of their building, with Robbie getting a start on neatly labeling his psychology flashcards and Steve playing some sort of zombie video game on his phone. Every now and then, he emits soft sounds of alarm, which had sort of scared Robbie at first, and he kept wanting to ask Steve if there was a bug on him or something, but now he was just ignoring it.

"Hey guys," says Tori, suddenly appearing from nowhere, America's sneakiest ninja.

Robbie squeaks, twisting on the couch to peer up at her. "Tori!" he yips, and kicks his bookbag over. "Hello!"

"Hey!" she says again, bouncing a little. She's wearing her cute cartoon cat sweater again, much to Robbie's eternal dismay. How is he supposed to artfully avoid her when she's wearing the cartoon cat sweater? He looks to Steve for help.

"Hey Vega," says Steve, unhelpful, frantically tapping away at his phone without looking over.

"So … what's up, you two?" Tori asks brightly.

"We're studying," Steve says, still unhelpful.

Tori looks at him carefully. "Uh … huh," she says slowly, crinkling her nose up at his phone. Then she pulls her head up to train her eyes on Robbie. "Hey, Robbie, can I, uh, talk to you for a minute?"

"Um," says Robbie.

He stares at her. She stares back at him, then brings her gaze back Steve for a minute. Robbie also looks at Steve, hoping again for help.

"Oh," says Steve, finally looking up. His eyes roam slowly from Tori to Robbie, then back to Tori. He lowers his phone, reaches for his bookbag, shooting them a half-smile. "I am so _tuckered_," he says, which is a word Robbie had used earlier and he'd laughed at, which is wildly unfair and not nice. Roommates! "I mean, I should, like, get to bed, and stuff."

"Oh, you don't have to – " starts Robbie, but then Steve cuts him off with an exaggerated yawn and quickly rises from the opposite couch. He slinks upstairs without a backward glance.

Roommates.

Robbie watches him until he disappears behind the first rising in the steps, then reluctantly pulls his gaze back to Tori, who bounces a little again. "Hi stranger," she says, which is possibly the third time she's greeted him.

"Hi Tori," he says.

"Um"- she collapses onto the couch next to him-"so, Robbie?" She sounds sort of uncertain, which is strange for her.

"Tori?"

She frowns over at him. She's wearing her glasses once again, also to his eternal dismay. They're much cuter than his. "Did I do something to you?"

He blinks hard. "Whuh?"

Tori's frown grows. She pokes at him, which is dangerous, because feelings, and says, "Are you mad at me?"

"What!" He evades the poke, accidentally kicking at the coffee table. Girls touching him makes his legs a bit spastic, especially the left one. "No!"

"Because it kind of feels like you're ignoring me."

"Ignoring you!" Robbie screams in panic and guilt. "Ha ha! Tori! No! Why would I! Ignore you! Tori!"

"I don't _know,_" Tori pouts, still poking! "That's why I'm asking you."

Robbie evades the poke again, and Tori gives up, dropping her hands to her sides and looking at him expectantly. Lamely, he says, "I just am so busy this semester."

Tori glances down at his four psychology flashcards which each have only two words written on them and are the only things he has out of his bookbag and says, "Yeah, you look _so busy._"

"I," he says, "it's internal memorization, Tori, do you think Pavlov's theories came about in a day - ? "

Tori sighs loudly.

"Er," says Robbie, because he must be being boring. "I'm – I'm sorry. I just, I_ am_ busy, but. Um. I didn't think you would. Notice?"

Her brow furrows. "Of course I would notice!" She jabs at him again, causing a small squeak to emit. "Robbie, you're like, one of my best friends! I _miss_ you!"

Oh. "Oh."

She definitely wouldn't have called him one of her best friends in high school, he thinks. He feels a little pleased, but – well, _friends,_ that isn't really what he wants, is it?

No matter. Tori's leaned over to look at him now, pout still on a bit, which is unacceptable, so he says, rather unnecessarily, "You're one of my best friends too?"

Her face smooths out into a smile. He wonders if she knows her face is rather heart-shaped when she smiles, and if that's why she does it so often. "Good," she says. "So you really aren't avoiding me?"

"Haha," he says. "Of course not! I mean, you know me, right! Just – just studying. Knowledge is power, Tori!"

"I guess so," she says, a bit doubtfully. She looks like she's gearing up to poke at him again, or pepper him with more questions, which could be hazardous due to the things he might say, so he breaks in to ask her, "Want to do something now?"

She frowns at him, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Aren't you – busy?"

"Well," he says. "You – well, but I don't have class again until Thursday. I have - "

Tori pouts severely! She says, "Robbie, I don't even know your schedule this semester! I don't even know what classes you're taking – you haven't told me _anything!_"

He feels terrible, which is not unusual. "I can – tell you. In the cafeteria! I like the cafeteria! Do you want to get cake? Chocolate cake! Tori! With flour, and gluten, and lots of sugar! That I can, um, watch you eat. Because. Cake. Flour."

Tori looks slightly overwhelmed. That hadn't been too many words, had it? She says, "I don't have any money for cake."

"I'm buying!" he offers quickly.

She looks at him hesitantly before another heart-shaped smile blooms. "Well, okay. You're a good man, Robbie Shapiro."

"Thank you," he says graciously, thinking that really he's not very good at all.

* * *

January comes to an end, and it's a little hectic, to be honest, what with balancing out the whole not-ignoring-Tori-yet-trying-to-push-past-the-overwhelming-feelings thing, which – okay, the feelings, they really can't be helped at all.

Not when they've got a sort of twice-weekly study group going now with Steve and April, and Tori's needing his help constantly in Algebra, pouting adorably and leaning over him at calculations, or when she just appears outside of his Psychology class as it's ending, looking expectant and wanting to hang out for no reason at all and holding a_ chocolate soy latte_ for him, which he totally hadn't even realized you could buy on campus ("I checked the website," Tori tells him happily, as he carefully takes the drink from her. "I walked all the way down past the Murmible Building."

"Wow," says Robbie, floored. The Murmible Building is all the way across campus and is home to the Advanced Languages department, where most freshman – especially Tori and Robbie – fear to tread).

It's a week before Valentine's Day now, which is totally not even a real holiday in any regard, and who cares about Valentine's Day?

Certainly not Robbie Shapiro, who's just spent an hour at the Northridge Mall with Steve and April looking at greeting cards and teddy bears to potentially-maybe-not-but-probably buy for Tori. Because they're friends, right, and friends can do that, especially when neither of them have significant others – at least he doesn't think so, because Tori's still listed on Splashface as single and Robbie perpetually is. She hasn't said a thing to him (or to April, who Robbie's rather suavely been pestering for the past few weeks) about Jackson Fuentes or leather jackets, either, even though he's hesitantly asked her about Christmas break a few times, so that means she's single, right?

"What about a Snoopy Valentine, that's not very romantic, right? I mean, Peanuts, that's like childhood stuff, that's fun, that's cute, that's not too much, right?" Robbie waves the small stuffed Snoopy in April's face (Snoopy is dressed like the Red Baron, and has a small barrel full of chocolates strapped to his back).

April looks a little unhappy to be out in civilization, dressed in raggedy jeans and what Robbie thinks girls call a poncho. Steve and Robbie had run into her while leaving campus, and Robbie had invited her along with them - partly out of niceness, partly out of the fact that he knows she has a crush on Steve, and partly because she's Tori's closest friend here at school and thusly would know all about Tori's views on Snoopy valentines. Together, he reasons, the three parts combined spell out good intentions! April says, stepping back from Snoopy and bunching the hem of the maybe-poncho up between her hands, "I thought we were just here to buy records."

"Well," says Robbie. He clutches Snoopy very tightly. "We – we are. It's just a. Detour. You know. Totally coincidental that we came in on this side of the mall and not by the music store."

Steve is looking longingly at the displays of elaborate chocolate boxes. "I'd sure like a Valentine, Shapiro."

"Um." Robbie blinks. "You - "

"Me too," says April, and then they both look at him expectantly.

"You - " he says again, helpless and flustered.

"I just bought a 126 dollar Medieval History book," April tells him severely, putting her hands on her hips. "I should be studying right now, not helping you woo my roommate."

"Eek! I'm not _wooing _- "

"I did not just buy a 126 dollar Medieval History book," Steve interrupts, "but I still want chocolate."

April nods in agreement, still looking severe. Robbie clutches Snoopy. "You guys – fine, if, okay, if you help me pick out something for Tori, I'll, I'll buy you chocolates."

They look considering.

"I'd sure like a Bob Dylan record, too," says Steve.

He really doesn't know why he is friends with these people at all. "Fine, whatever," he says shortly. "Look, can I just - "

"I think I'd like a new copy of Dylan and the Dead," Steve continues. "Since my dad kept my old one."

"Right," says Robbie. Desperately, "April - "

"Rob, if you really want to ask Tori out, I don't think you even need a valentine, really," April says slowly.

"What!" He squeezes Snoopy very hard, and he feels the plastic barrel creak dangerously. "You – ha ha. Oh, you think I want to ask – oh, no, see, it's just a friendship thing, we're friends, good friends, last year at school we had a valentine's pollyanna and we made paper mache organs for everyone in my Improv class, it's not a - "

Steve's brow furrows. "Um, what, for Valentine's?"

"Yes. Steven. I just said that."

"How come?"

Robbie waves the stuffed animal. "Because lungs are romantic!"

Steve and April just stare a little, so then Robbie has to take pause and explain about Sikowitz, who always encouraged his students to be unconventional. He'd also been trying to get Beck and Jade back together at that point, and had felt that Jade could not be wooed by a simple heart (Beck, for some reason, looked up to Sikowitz, and they had spent a lot of time after school in Sikowitz's classroom senior year, getting life and love advice [it hadn't helped Robbie any]).

"So, Beck, he's the one with the hair, right?" April asks.

"Yes, yes, the hair," Robbie says impatiently. Girls, always getting off-topic! He shoves Snoopy in her face again. "Peanuts! Help me, woman!"

April gives him a mildly offended look, reaching up swiftly and snatching the stuffed dog away. She holds it by one ear and looks at him threateningly. "What did I say about waving stuffed animals in my face, Rob?"

Robbie squeaks.

"Say, aren't you allergic to peanuts?" Steve asks. "We aren't." He's holding a two-pound box of chocolates now, and April moves beside him to clutch at the other end of it. They both look at him hopefully.

No, he doesn't know why he has friends at all.

* * *

A few days later he comes into the girls' dorm room to find Jade lounging on Tori's bed, looking severe and utterly bored with everything, as is how Jade usually looks.

"Oh," says Robbie in surprise, doing a double take. "You. Jade. Hello."

Tori and April are sitting together on April's bed in silence, watching Jade with what Robbie feels must be great trepidation, and their heads turn in almost comical tandem at the sound of his voice.

"Hi Robbie!" Tori says happily – and rather nervously, he thinks. April just emits a small soft sound of fear, probably due to Jade's presence.

"Hello," he says again, looking around. "Um." He dares to sneak another little glance at Jade, and finds to his dismay that she's glowering back at him. He also emits a small soft sound of fear.

Tori breaks in before Jade can climb off of the bed and throttle him for acknowledging her presence, though. "Jade is here visiting!" she says pleasantly.

"Oh," Robbie says blankly, because the world had stopped making sense ninety seconds ago when he'd walked in and seen Jade here in Tori's room apparently of her own volition. "That's nice. And - just in time for Valentine's Day, too!" It's three days away, on Saturday.

At the mention of the holiday, Jade snarls, and Tori looks vastly alarmed. She jumps up quickly, nearly knocking tiny April over as the flimsy mattress bounces. "Robbie," she says urgently, "I need your help with that thing we were talking about."

"Oh," he says, blank once again, and stares at Tori. She gives him a slightly panicked look, furrowing and then unfurrowing her brows at him in desperation, and he starts a little after a moment, understanding. "Oh! Yes! That – that thing! In the – place!"

Tori's mouth twists slightly, though he's not sure if it's with amusement or exasperation. "Yup, that thing, in the place," she repeats, almost as if to herself, wry and a little quiet. "Yeah, so, we're just going to get some food real quick, Robbie has to control his blood sugar – Jade, you want anything?"

"Nope," says Jade, who's returned to looking bored and severe, laying back and staring at the wall.

"Okay, great!" Tori says brightly. "So, we'll be right back! If you need anything, just ask April!"

April, still sitting on the bed, gives out a tiny desperate squeak, gazing at both of them with scared _please don't leave me here alone with this beast_ eyes, but Tori just takes hold of Robbie's shirtsleeve and drags him unceremoniously into the hallway.

She closes the door and leans on it heavily, sighing and lowering her head so that her hair falls into her face. She covers her face with her hands for a moment, then jumps up and seizes the hem of his sweater again, dragging him further down the hall. She looks around fitfully when she must feel they've moved a safe distance from her dorm room, as if she thinks Jade could be lurking through the walls.

"Uh," says Robbie. Despite the fear that had crept up in his chest, he's not too upset to see Jade – he does like looking at her, you know – but he is rather utterly lost. Is Jade here to blackmail Tori into something? Or – oh God, did she get herself kicked out of school? Perhaps she's murdered someone! Maybe she's hiding out here! Maybe she has concealed weapons in her luggage! Maybe she -

Tori yanks hard on his sweater to drag him down to eye-level with her, which is uncomfortable – feelings, etc – and she whispers dramatically, "So Jade dumped Beck."

"_What?_" Robbie squeals. "_Again?_"

Tori releases her hold on him to run her hands through her hair once more. "I, I guess so!"

"Geez, _when?_" He hasn't talked to Beck since the beginning of the week, but he hadn't said anything about having any problems with Jade.

"I don't _know!_" Tori says, frowning. "She hasn't really told me much. I assume very, very recently?"

"Well – well, what is she doing _here?_"

"I don't _know!_" Tori cries again, and shakes Robbie's shoulders briefly. "I guess – I guess she just needed someone? I mean, Cat's far away, right?"

Robbie frowns. "Yes," he says carefully, "but Tori – Jade sort of, well, hates you."

Tori looks offended. "She does _not_!" she squeals, and batters at his chest (he yelps and jumps back, hitting his head against the wall). "Over Christmas break, she even said she was _tolerating_ me now. And we got _ice cream!_" She beams with pride for a quick moment before commencing to look crestfallen. "But look – she's, like, really upset, okay? She hasn't said anything, but she was _crying_ last night!"

Robbie's mouth falls open in disbelief, and Tori nods emphatically. "I _know._ So, so I told her she was welcome to stay the weekend. I skipped class this morning to hang out with her and April." She pauses to frown again slightly. "I sort of – didn't think she'd stay so long. Thought she'd get annoyed, because – "

" – that's what she does," Robbie finishes for her.

Tori smiles softly. "Yeah," she says. "So, I guess, now we have a Jade."

" _'We?'_ " Robbie asks, and Tori glares at him. He smiles guiltily.

"Okay, so, I just wanted to warn you," Tori continues on. "She's really upset, so – you know, no talking about Beck, and _definitely_ no Valentine's Day stuff, all right?"

"Ha ha," says Robbie uncomfortably, shifting his backpack with the boxes of chocolate he has for the girls and also the special Snoopy greeting card April's helped pick out just for Tori. "Geez, I didn't even realize."

"Oh," says Tori, and frowns again for some reason. "Well – well, okay. I mean, that's good. Who cares about Valentine's Day, anyway, right?"

"Not me!" says Robbie.

"Yeah!" says Tori fiercely. "Not me, either!"

"Right," he agrees hesitantly. Then: "So, um, you don't – you don't have a, a date or anything? On, on Valentine's Day?"

Oh god, what is he doing? He shouldn't have eaten all those rice cakes earlier. They do strange things to his brain patterns.

"Nope," says Tori, "no date," and then just looks up at him.

"Right," says Robbie again, and then he just looks at her too, because he doesn't know what else to say or do that is safe. After a pause, he manages, "I mean – sorry. I mean, I guess we should go get something to eat, so we don't look suspicious. We've been out here for a while already. I fear for April's life. I mean, I don't think Jade wants to watch The X Files."

Tori continues to stare at him for a minute more – she seems kind of expectant for some reason, eyes searching his face, and he really doesn't know what that's about – but then she nods and gives him a tiny smile. "Right," she says. "Yeah. Let's go get some food. Let's hurry!"

* * *

So – now Jade is here, and that's weird, but it's actually sort of all right, too, because Robbie's gotten a haircut last month and Tori and April had hidden his pink shirt weeks ago and he's not carrying Rex around, so he guesses he isn't annoying Jade as much anymore. She's much nicer to him when he isn't bothering her with how he looks and acts.

He spends the rest of Wednesday morning with the girls, none of them really talking too much – they play a rather somber game of Apples to Apples and no one dares to mention Beck at all – and Thursday, he's got Psychology and Bio II and English, but on Friday he goes back to the dorms in the early afternoon, intent on saving April because he knows Tori's got class all day and surely Jade wouldn't go to that with her.

April looks very thankful to see him, and he walks with the girls around campus for a while, listening to them talk about Jade's forensics class (forensics?! She's a freshman!) and criminal shows and cute actors and other strange girl things.

"Jade's a lot nicer when you're around," April confides in him while Jade's up in line at the cafeteria, getting her fifth coffee of the day.

"Oh," says Robbie, surprised. "Well, she just has to get to used to you, I guess. I mean, I've known her since before eighth grade. She can be really cool, once you get past the ridicule. We did this play together last year, and had a lot of fun."

"Oh yeah?" April asks in a tone that's much too mild. "How much fun?" But then Jade's reappearing before he can question her any on it or even really reply.

After April leaves for her afternoon class, he and Jade wander slowly back to the girl's dorm, chatting idly. He lists the bands that Steve's been introducing him to and Jade hums in approval or impassivity. He feels a little unsure of himself once they get back to Tori's room, standing awkwardly in the doorframe, but Jade doesn't tell him to go. Out of politeness, he decides to stay for a few minutes (keeping safe across the room on April's bed), and they end up they reruns of old 90s sitcoms on the girls' small TV.

Jade growls slightly when Full House comes on, and Robbie practically dives across the room, retrieving the remote to change the channel.

"Beck loved this crap," Jade says absently (Robbie knows, hence the diving).

"Um," he says. "You – are you, okay? With the, uh, Beck?"

Jade shoots him a quick look. "Yeah, I guess so." She pulls herself up into a sitting position, moving to sit Indian-style on Tori's bed. "It was just time for it, I guess."

"I'm sorry," he offers lamely.

"Whatever," Jade retorts, peering into her empty coffee cup. Without looking up: "So what about you and Vega?"

Robbie – wait for it – flushes greatly. "What – what now?" he asks eloquently.

Jade pulls her eyes up to look at him sardonically. He manages about six seconds before he falters under her gaze and sighs. "I'm that obvious?" he asks.

Jade shrugs. "To some."

"What – what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing at all, _Cat_," Jade says sweetly, and Robbie smiles involuntarily. "It means I'm not stupid. And Tori – I mean, Vega tells me things."

The flush is growing greater and greater still. "What things? _When_ things? She – she tells you, what, exactly? Does she – when do you even _talk_ to Tori?"

Jade sends him another glower. "It's called email, dumb-ass."

"Oh," he says. Then, sulkily: "You never email me."

Jade laughs a bit, and she starts say something else, but then the door bangs open and Tori comes bursting in, all laden-down with textbooks and saying, "Gosh, sorry Jade, my History professor wouldn't stop talking and – oh, Robbie!" She pauses in the middle of the room, eyebrows dipping down in befuddlement, though she sends him her bright smile anyway. "You – you're here. And you're. Here. Hanging out with Jade."

"Sorry?" he tries, and Jade rolls her eyes at him.

"No, no!" Tori says quickly, moving to put her books down on the desk she shares with April. "Just sort of – no, it's nice, I just didn't know you and Jade were" – she glances up at the TV – "the, you know, Boy-Meets-World-watching type of friends."

Rather evilly, Jade says, "There's lots you don't know about me and Shapiro, Tor."

_Tor! _Jade's just called her _Tor!_ What sort of alternate universe has he stepped into? Also, Jade is a demon. Robbie blushes terribly. Tori looks sort of upset, most likely because she also understands that Jade is a demon.

"I didn't know it was so late," Robbie tells Tori, glancing at his watch. They've been watching television and talking for over two hours – he hadn't realized! Tori's brows are still drawn down, and he's feeling like he should be apologizing for – well, apologizing for something. He thinks that this must be part of being a boy: girls making their eyebrows twist at you, and you feeling like you should be feeling some sort of way, but not really knowing why or what. "I thought, um, April would have been back now. I should go anyway, I mean, Steve gets lonely – "

"Oh, you aren't going to come to dinner with us, Robbie?" Tori asks, looking overwhelmingly crushed for whatever reason. "But it's Friday! It's pizza night!" She frowns. "I mean, not that you ever actually eat the pizza, but – "

Jade breaks in, "Yeah, Robbie-baby, come to dinner with us."

"Um," he says, flustered. Honestly, he's really forgotten just how very strange Jade is. She'd really been fine until Tori had came in! "Okay, sure. Oh, I should call Steve, though, he's – "

"Steve's your roomie, right?" asks Jade, also known as She Who Loves Interrupting People. Robbie nods in affirmation, digging through his jeans' pocket for his PearPhone, and Jade smirks a little. "Ooh, yeah, bring him. April says he's a real babe."

Tori snorts, and Robbie mutters absently, "Did she, did she actually use that terminology? _Real babe?_ That's, that's nice, I guess."

"Yeah, so, what does _Tori_ think about Steve?" Jade asks sweetly. She shifts over on the bed to look up at Tori, who sends her a mistrustful little glare. Robbie flushes some more and concentrates very hard on scrolling through his phone contacts because he does understand that the general female consensus is that Steve is a _real babe_ and he really doesn't need to hear that Tori thinks the same.

"Uhhhh," says Tori, frowning again, looking back and forth between Jade and Robbie in apparent distress. "I mean, he's okay, I guess."

"Just _okay?_" Jade chirrups. "What, you don't like blondes?"

Who doesn't like blondes? Clearly, Tori's trying to spare his feelings as a fellow non-blonde. He keeps his eyes trained on his phone, tapping out a sad little message to Steve. _Tori still doesn't love me. Pizza?_

Tori makes a soft sound of frustration, swooping to her closet and beginning to select an outfit to change into. "I am just _so hungry,_" she bites out. "I need to get changed right away so we can go get pizza. Can't answer your questions now, Jade."

She yanks at one of her sweaters with great gusto, and the hanger goes flying, then storms into the bathroom. Steve texts him back: _But I love you! Pizza! _Robbie just looks dismally at his phone, then at the closed bathroom door.

Jade, for some reason, looks sort of happy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Keeping On, Keeping On**

**Part Three of Three  
**

"I don't want to," says Robbie, trying to turn and walk back down the porch steps, but he's met with the menacing wall of Jade, Steve, and April.

"You have to," snarls Jade.

"I don't want to!" He feints to the left, but Steve blocks him, and Jade reaches out to dig her sharp and probably poison-tipped nails into his forearm.

"Too bad," says Steve.

"No!" cries Robbie, struggling, but Jade is still stronger. April moves around to grab at his other arm, and the two girls fight him through the doorframe. Already, from inside the house, he hears the faint booming bass of a Ginger Fox song beginning.

Robbie makes a low sound of horror. "Guys, it's – there's disco lights in here."

"Everything about this is all your fault," April says severely. "Now we all have to suffer."

The thing is, Robbie doesn't hate college parties. At least, he doesn't think he does, as he hasn't really been to one yet. The stoner videogame get-together with Steve a few months ago hadn't really counted.

He just has this thing about underaged drinking, and Steve knows it, and so does April, and Jade knows it even more (Jade actually knows the real reason – it's not the underaged part of it at all, just the drinking part, the part of it where alcohol goes very badly with his various allergy medications, and once during sophomore year in Jade's backyard, he'd thrown up a pina colada all over Beck). The three of them are really just horrible people who have dragged him out to some idiot's Valentine's Day party against his will and are now assaulting him in the doorway.

"_My_ fault?" he squeals out. "How is it _my_ fault?"

The girls give him twin glares. "Don't start, Shapiro," Jade warns.

April, whose mean streak has really been coming out more and more since Jade's been here, twists his arm viciously. "Why couldn't you just give Tori her stupid Snoopy chocolates?"

"Yeah," says Steve forcefully, who probably had just wanted to add something.

Robbie struggles some more. "You – she – Tori doesn't want my Snoopy chocolates!" he bawls out, and then Jade sort of throws him into a lamp.

"Your relationship ineptitude really, really hurts me," she says, "and _believe me,_ it's not the good kind of hurt."

"You really hurt Tori's feelings last night," April says, and she also shoves him into the lamp! "Now we're all trapped in this stupid frat house until you make things right!"

Robbie lets out a rather undignified squeal as the lampshade flutters against his head. "Steve, aren't you going to help me? Soli" – _shove! _– "darity!"

Steve, lighting up a cigarette just outside the doorframe, looks fairly impassive.

"I don't – I don't even know what you girls are talking about," Robbie tries, but Jade shoves him again.

"Do you need us to reiterate your little scene?" she demands, voice cold. "Shall we reenact it?"

"No, no," he says quickly, because really, he does know what they're talking about, but because it's girls, he just doesn't quite grasp the _why_ of it. "I'll, I can, I'll play it back in my own head."

Last night, when the group had been eating dinner at the pizzeria, a blonde boy had came up to their table to talk to Tori – "This is Jake from my English class, guys!" Tori burbled – and invited her to the party Robbie was currently being manhandled at.

"I know it's last minute, but it'd be cool if you came," Stupid Jake From Her English Class said, leaning obnoxiously on their table. His biceps threatened to burst the seams of his shirtsleeves, and he appeared to have a tattoo – Robbie hated him absently. "Didn't have your number to text you and ask."

"Ha ha," Tori, who must be used to boys trying to get her number all the time, said, "well, the thing is, I'm not really much of a party-goer. I mean, this is my first year, I don't want to get all _crazy_ – "

"Hey, you don't have to drink or anything," Stupid Jake From Her English Class told her. "It's not a kegger." He had leaned further.

At the continued leaning, Robbie had been unable to help himself - "Hem-hem!" He cleared his throat into his diet soda rather loudly. Jade and Steve had glanced up from their shared pizza (gross pineapples and bacon) in interest.

"Oh," SJFEC said, finally looking up from mooning over Tori and realizing there were other people occupying the table. "I mean, bring your friends, too!" He'd jerked his chin up at Robbie. "Bring your boyfriend."

Oh, yes, choking on his soda, he'd almost forgotten what that feels like. Tori had blinked, turning her head to look at him, and Robbie choked some more. "Oh, I'm not – definitely not her boyfriend," he croaked out. "Me? Boyfriend? Not. Why would we – ? Haha. No way. Definitely not. No. Nope."

Steve and Jade had both stared at him in mute disappointment and horror, as if they were watching an old replay of a space shuttle crash. Tori's brows had done their dangerous swoop-y thing.

"Oh," SJFEC had said, blinking. "Um. That's cool? I mean, didn't mean to offend you, dude – "

"You know what?" Tori broke in suddenly. "I think I _will_ go. A party could be fun, right guys?"

"No," said Jade.

"Very doubtful," said Steve.

Tori looked away from Robbie to beam brightly up at SJFEC. "Want to give me your number?" she asked. "You can text me directions."

Rats.

SJFEC had written his number for her on a napkin, then headed off back to his own table. Tori looked after him for a moment, quiet, then begun to gather up her empty soda cup and paper plate. "Yay, weekend!" she had said, but her voice sounded tight. "Be right back, guys." She'd slid abruptly out of the booth.

Jade and Steve watched in silence as Tori crossed to the front of the small restaurant to reach the recycling bins. Robbie stared in abject misery at the phone-number-napkin.

Jade turned back and pinched him, hard, on the arm! "Great job, nimrod!"

Robbie had squealed. "Ow! Jade! What?"

"You totally just burned her," said Steve around a mouthful of french fries.

"What? _Burned_ – ? No, I was just – "

"Burned like she'd going to need, like, four reconstructive surgeries 'cause you burned her so bad," Steve continued conversationally.

"God, Robbie, you need to get your act together," Jade had sneered, and then she'd been sliding out from the booth as well, heading for where Tori had still been lingering by the exit door.

Now, Robbie cries out, hurt, "April, you weren't even _there!_"

April looks rather unimpressed by him and not very sympathetic anyhow. "Oh, I heard about it, though," she says. "For, like, three hours, I heard about it."

"We both heard about it," Jade adds, still cold.

"I heard it too," Steve says. "The back of my neck gets prickly when hot girls are upset."

"_What? _You – I don't – "

"Understand?" break in Jade and April, and they look at him darkly. Both girls have been horribly mean to him since last night - Jade had came over to the boys' dorm at around noon, claiming boredom, and all she'd done all day was pick at Robbie's sweaters and hair and yell about what a loser he was, and that it was no wonder he didn't have a girlfriend!

"Yes," he says falteringly. "I mean, no! I mean, yes, I don't understand! I didn't mean to upset Tori, I don't know why she would be upset, she got so quiet after we left the restaurant – "

"Dude," Steve interrupts in a pained tone, "you're _killing_ me."

"Whah?"

Jade groans into her palms. "Look, Shapiro," she says slowly, dragging her hands down her face to glower at him. "Think hard. Why would Tori be upset at you? Why would Tori be upset that you felt the need to wildly deny the fact that she is your girlfriend?"

Girls! He doesn't understand them! "I don't know!"

"BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND, IDIOT!" Jade positively roars.

Robbie opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He stares at her for a moment before he manages, "Oh, you – you're actually insane. You don't really think – "

"Listen to me, you nerdy ventriloquist," Jade snarls, grabbing and manhandling the collar of the striped sweater she's forced him to wear, "Vega wants you to give her the stupid Snoopy chocolates! I don't even know what the frick that even means, but you're going to go grab a drink, dance your way over to her, swing in on cupid's arrow, I don't give a chizz" -

Robbie squeaks –

"-but just go find her, now, so we can get out of this godforsaken place before my eardrums explode!"

"But you – "

Jade emits a low and rather terrifying squawling noise, so Robbie shuts up and sinks further back against the wall. He manages, "Okay, okay!"

Jade relinquishes her hold, apparently satisfied. "Good," she says, and then, insanely, she fixes his collar. "Off you go, nerdbomb. We'll all be on the porch or something, hating ourselves. So hurry up."

He watches in silence as his horrible friends turn and filter back out of the house, leaving him alone amongst the terrifying hordes of mildly intoxicated college students. He really doesn't understand anything that's happening.

Robbie pushes past a group of students, making his way further into the frat house.

He understands that he is supposed to find Tori. And then – what, exactly? He doesn't – she doesn't – well, she can't, you see. Jade must be wrong, and so is April. Tori doesn't want his Snoopy chocolates. Hasn't anyone been paying attention all semester? Robbie is a nerd, and girls like Tori don't – they don't –

Well, she can't. She wouldn't. Would she?

No matter. He's upset her somehow, last night, upset her enough to make her come to a stranger's party by herself. Who knows what sort of men could be lurking in a place like this!

He finds her, at last, in the kitchen, standing by the sink and talking to a few girls he vaguely recognizes from last semester's Bio Lab. Robbie hovers awkwardly in the doorframe for a few moments, hoping she'll somehow be alerted to his presence by pure luck or strange girl-sense, but she doesn't look up. Finally, "Tori," he calls out, pushing up off the doorframe and beginning to make his way over.

Tori's brows furrow in confusion at the sound of her name, and her head goes up, eyes searching. Her hair is in a long braid, which looks nice, and she's wearing one of those short dresses that she and Jade and Cat like to wear and Robbie and the boys enjoy when they wear. Her eyes meet his a long minute later, when he's nearly upon her, and they light up briefly before clouding over in confusion.

"Robbie!" she exclaims, gesturing with her drink – oh god, what is she consuming?! - "You – what are you doing here?"

"We – I, that is, uh, I came to find you," he stammers out, feeling very awkward with the eyes of the Bio Lab girls critically upon him. "Could I possibly," he starts out, just as she says, laughter in her voice, "Robbie, what happened to your _collar?_"

"Oh." He lifts his hand, feeling the rough material of the mangled sweater bunching up against the side of his neck. "Uh. Well, Jade happened."

"Oh. Right. Jade." Tori's face goes smoothly blank before she shoots him another small smile, eyes darting everywhere.

"Yeah, she tried to fix – well, she sort of grabbed – uh, Tori, is it okay if, could I talk to you?"

Tori's brows furrow again. "Um, sure." Robbie stares at her hopefully, and she looks back before starting suddenly. "Oh!" She turns quickly, braid whipping his face, to the Bio Lab girls. "Sorry, guys, this is – well, um, I'm going to - I'll just be right back."

The Bio Lab girls make absent noises of agreement, already distracted by the pair of jocks that have come by to open up the fridge. Robbie can hear bottles clinking, and he moves away awkwardly too, following after Tori, who's crossing the room to head out the side door. The layout of the frat house confuses him. Firstly, why would one place a kitchen all the way at the back of the house, and secondly, why would the kitchen lead to the backyard? The off-campus housing is fairly new, he thinks; the builders who created the blueprints should have the sense to know that a college boy's first thoughts upon entering home would be for food, why would you make it so you have to roam the whole house to get to the refrigerator – ?

He does realize that he's doing the thing where he ruminates on anything at all aside from what is important. He quickens his pace to catch the screen door before it closes, yelping a bit when he almost crashes into Tori, then jumps to the left to get out of her way. She sends him an amused little half-smile as she moves over too, then leans out with a thin tanned arm to shut the door.

There are colored lantern lights strung up on the patio. It's very nice. Soft light. Doesn't cast many shadows. Tori and April had recently watched an X-Files episode where what Robbie refers to as the Monster of the Week had needed soft light, the man's shadow had been –

"Tori," he says once she's closed the door to the back porch, because he's doing the ruminating thing again, "I'm sorry for choking on soda and saying that you weren't my girlfriend, even though you aren't my girlfriend."

Tori takes pause, looking at him with her head tilted slightly, and she moves away to go and lean against the wooden deck railing. "Oh. Um, that's all right."

Robbie presses on. "I just – I didn't think you'd want, uh, anyone to think that, it's just, what's his name was all, _leaning_, and I couldn't, and I mean – I, I, you're my friend, Tori."

"Um." Tori smiles down at her crossed arms. "You're my friend too, Robbie."

"I just." He comes over to stand beside her, struggling for words. "No, it's – I mean, Tori, I – I like – I mean. You are. It's just. I think you're mad at me. And I'm not – "

"Robbie," Tori breaks in softly, silencing him. She glances over, that strange little smile still on her face, to look at him quickly. "You goober. I'm not mad at you."

"Oh," he says dumbly. "You. Well. Jade said" - actually, Jade had said a lot of things, and he still really has no idea what any of them mean - "I just thought you might be mad."

Tori quirks an eyebrow. "You were just, um. Not very tactful."

"I'm sorry," he says.

Tori sighs. "No, it's okay," she says. She bites her lip, frowns down at her arms, looks at the plastic cup that's dangling from her left hand. "Robbie, I just – "

"Tori," he demands suddenly, "what is in that cup?"

Tori frowns up at him in confusion, before snorting at him and raising her eyebrows. "Grape soda."

"Oh," he says, relieved.

Tori snorts again, moving to knock at his side with her elbow. "God, Robbie! What do you think of me? I'm just going to become an alcoholic overnight to drown my sorrows?"

"No," he says, guilty. Also, what sorrows?! "Tori – "

"Robbie – " she says at the same time, and they both look at each other awkwardly for a second before she laughs a little, dropping her gaze and continuing. "Look, I guess I have something I want to say."

"Um," he says. "Okay."

Tori frowns some more, which makes him feel very badly, even though he's not sure why she is doing so – Tori should never be frown-y! "I don't really know … " she says slowly. "Look, I've known you for a long time, and I never thought before – I mean, you're been such a great friend to me here at school" -

great friend, always a great friend, here he comes, Robbie Shapiro, great friend extraordinaire –

"and I don't want to, you know, I didn't want to mess anything up, because really you're one of my best friends, and we all hang out now, you know, you and me and April and Steve – "

"Tori," he tries to say, because now she's ranting on about their roommates for some reason, and Jade and April had been really specific that he should give her the Snoopy chocolates; Steve had even made him bring his backpack, and he doesn't want all three to beat him up for not doing his duty, but Tori just ignores him and continues speaking.

" – and then, for a while I thought that maybe, but then, Jade is here, and I'm so stupid, I mean, it's not like she'd ever pay that sort of attention to you, but I _am_ a girl after all, we get – you know, _territorial_ – "

" – um, Tori, you, I like – "

" – but then I told her that I – " now she's waving the grape soda cup around, which is dangerous, and some of it spills over and sloshes on her arm, but she just keeps on – "and, you know, why would I tell her that, I was just trying to make her feel better, you know, like, oh, I'm sorry you dumped your boyfriend of like three years, but get a load of this, _I _like – "

"Tori, I like – "

" – and, you know, Robbie, this is hard for me, I mean, you're not really like any other guy I've met, and I've never had to ask someone out before!"

Robbie starts. "You – what?"

Tori smiles sadly down at her spilled soda. "You're so dumb, Robbie."

Robbie just stares at her, mouth open, which he's sure is very appealing. "You are – you have – I'm sorry, what?"

"Robbie," Tori sighs, "I've been flirting with you for months now. Since, like, before Christmas."

Robbie stares blankly. "You are. Flirting. With me?"

"Well – " she shakes the cup again – "I mean, not _right now._"

"Oh," says Robbie. "Right. No. Um. I didn't think – "

"It's just – " Tori frowns again, which is horrible, and she bites her lip. "You know, we started spending so much time together, and I really just have a lot of fun with you. So I just thought … well, I thought … but, I mean, I don't know."

The deck is spinning. The whole world is spinning – the earth's axis must have started speeding up about a minute ago, and Robbie isn't sure if he can keep his footing. He leans heavily back against the deck railing, completely overwhelmed. Tori has been flirting with him since before _Christmas_? And he's a _lot of fun_! And she had said – had she said – ? she was territorial? Did that mean she was, she was jealous of ... of _Jade_?

"Um," he says for the eighteenth time, elegant as always, "I'm really sorry, Tori, I didn't know. Um. That you were. Flirting."

"Really?" Tori frowns at him incredulously.

"Tori!" he squeaks, flustered. "You – how would I know, I mean, it's not like you wore a sign or anything, I'm a, don't you know that I'm a nerd, nerds don't – "

Magically, Tori just smiles at his utter bafflement. "You are sort of a nerd," she says quietly. Then, "I like it."

"You," he says, and stares blankly. "I don't – you."

"Robbie," Tori says gently, "you know how like ... how I was always getting together with you for help on my math homework?"

"Yes," he says.

Another half-smile on Tori's face, which isn't as nice as the full smile, but much better than the frown-face or swoopy eyebrows. "Do you remember how, uh, in high school, I graduated with honors from AP Calculus?"

"Yes," he says again, gears turning in his head.

Tori raises an eyebrow. "So ..." she says. "Not really much reason for me to need help in a basic Algebra class."

"Yes," he says blankly. Then, "Oh! My God! Tori!"

"Yep." Tori smiles tightly. "I am obvious and desperate."

Oh my god! Tori! She is – she has - she's been using _math_ to flirt with him! She_ is_ obvious and desperate! For – for _him!_

"Um," he pushes out, turning the words he'd like to say over in his head, wondering how he can get them out in the correct order, "you – I really didn't realize – "

"It's okay, Robbie," Tori interrupts him – she must be taking lessons from Jade. "Look, I don't know if you have feelings for Cat still, or something – "

"_Cat?_" Robbie squeals out incredulously. Aside from occasionally discussing the inane messages Cat will leave now and then on their Splaceface pages, neither he or Tori have mentioned Cat for _months_, he'd barely seen her over Christmas break – "Tori, I don't like _Cat!_"

"Well, I don't know!" Tori cries back, actually also seeming sort of flustered herself. "Or, or someone else, I don't know, it's better thinking you like someone else than just, just not _me_ – "

"Tori!" he says emphatically, desperately, needing to stop her. "Can you just stop for two seconds?"

"I don't _know_ if I can stop!" Tori yelps, waving her arm with the soda spastically and using the other to do her trademark sweeping-hair-behind-ears thing, and then, because this is his life, she spills her grape soda all over his shirt. "Oh my god, Robbie, I'm sorry!" she cries, dropping the cup, and the sound the plastic hitting the wood deck is oddly loud. She moves closer to start fussing over him in that way that girls do when they spill something on you, which is generally very nice but not helpful at all when they don't have napkins or cleaning solutions. "God, I guess I really _can't_ stop, oh my god is this _wool,_ I'm just the most – "

"I like you, Tori," Robbie says, and she freezes with her hands on his stomach and stares up at him silently.

"You do?"

"Yes," he says. "I – I like you a lot, Tori, I've liked you for – well, forever - um, but since we've been here at school, it's definitely gotten, you know, like, a thousand times worse."

"Oh," Tori says, and then the most wonderful heart-shaped smile blooms as she looks up at him.

Then she hits him in the stomach.

She's trying to frown at him, but she's still grinning, and her eyebrows seem to be refusing to do their dangerous swoopy-thing. "Well, why didn't you tell me?!"

"Um," says Robbie, because after she's hit him her hand has stayed on his lower chest, and she's got him rather trapped against the porch railing, and the grape soda is beginning to seep through his t-shirt, and it's actually very cold. "I didn't know how. I mean, I didn't think you'd go out with someone like me."

"Someone like – " then her eyebrows really do swoop down, and she frowns a little bit. "Oh, Robbie. You really do need to work on your context clues. We aren't in high school anymore. Didn't you ever fill out those self-esteem worksheets Sikowitz gave us in June?"

"Yes," says Robbie, "and they said I should seek immediate professional help."

Tori laughs a little – he's actually been completely serious, but he supposes she doesn't have to know this – and she looks down at her hand, splayed on his chest. "You big dork," she says, and her voice is amazingly affectionate. If this is a dream, he hopes he's in a coma and never wakes up, so he doesn't have to kill himself over the loss of that sound. She hits at him again, lightly. "You didn't have to let me go on for like five minutes just now! You could have said!"

Robbie squeaks out a little, indignant. "I was _trying_ – you, well, you talk too much, Tori!"

She looks up at him again, and her smile is amused and soft and the smallest bit embarrassed. "I told you, you have to tell me to shut up."

"That's mean," he says absently, mesmerized by her chocolate hair and eyes in the soft lantern lights.

One side of her mouth quirks even higher in a sardonic grin. "Well, there must be some other way," she says softly.

"Um," he says, and stares for another moment until he suddenly understands that she means for him to kiss her.

The fact that he even is picking up on this knowledge – the realization that a girl wants him to kiss her – is fairly incredible, and something that's never happened before. He thinks that perhaps he's been changing far more than he's realized.

"Oh," he says, "right," and then he gathers up all of the bravery that he hasn't used in his eighteen years, and he leans down, and Tori leans up, and maybe Mamaw was right and there is some sort of God up there, because he doesn't even miss, and he meets her mouth.

The world briefly explodes in a giant display of fireworks and rose-colored hearts. Or wait, it's probably just the boys in the yard, screaming as they knock over the kegger that's been set up.

"That's not grape soda," Robbie says once they break apart. "That's cherry."

Tori laughs happily. "Whatever!" she says. "Who cares about soda?" She leans up again, falling into him, to hug him and kiss him once more. He's vaguely concerned about the spilled soda getting on her, but only vaguely, because Tori Vega is kissing him, and who cares about anything else?

He falls against the railing, and something crinkles dangerously in his backpack.

"Oh," he says, because after all, it is Valentine's Day. "Um. Tori."

She pulls back slightly to frown at him in concern, like – like he's going to take it all back, or something! "What?"

"Um," he says. "It is – well, it is - it's Valentine's Day. I got you – um, I had to buy Steve a record."

Tori gives him a confused smile. "Um, that's sweet?"

"You," he says. "I went to – I got you, um, for Valentine's Day. I got you these Snoopy chocolates. They're in my backpack."

Tori beams. "I love Snoopy," she says, touched. Thank you, April!

"They've been in my bookbag all week," he tells her. "So they might be – um, sort of damaged, I can buy you – "

"You don't have to buy me anything, Robbie," Tori says, laughing at him. "Can we get out of here now?"

"Yeah," he says. "Um, if you'll go out on a date with me. After Jade goes home and it's, it's safe." He frowns. "If she ever goes home."

Tori is laughing, and she holds his hand, which is a wonderful thing. "Yes, I will go on a date with you," she says primly, beaming and bouncing. She makes a cute little face at him. "We can even go and get those soy burgers you like."

"Or not," he says quickly, and Tori laughs some more, and it's really very easy to lean down and kiss her again, because he can. It's much easier than he had thought it would be.

Later, once they find their way back to their friends, Jade screams at them for an eternity, April's covered in pink silly string, and Steve's nowhere to be found, but Tori's got her hand is his, and everything feels all right.

He looks down, following the length of his arm, looks at Tori's hand twined in his. Tori smiles, lovely, seemingly oblivious to Jade's screams, and she moves closer to lean into him, using her free hand to absently pull some silly string from poor April's poncho.

"Want to go watch The X Files?" she asks happily.

"Yes," he says, and Tori holds his hand tighter, pulling him off the porch as they set off back towards campus.

**AN: Yay, it is finished! Sorry to have ignored this fic for so long - I was really having trouble with the last scene, and I still feel like it lacks a bit of the closing punch that I wanted, but, well. Here is it! Holy dialogue dashes, Batman!**


End file.
